


Nothing Personal

by Big_Edies_Sun_Hat



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Historical, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Morning After, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23271892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Edies_Sun_Hat/pseuds/Big_Edies_Sun_Hat
Summary: This was not about the angel. They hadn’t foundthatout. If they had, that would have been the end of Crowley, very probably the end of Aziraphale, and, although Crowley did not know it then, the eventual end of the world. What this was about was memoranda. Specifically, it was about Crowley’s tendency to assume that the rules and announcements he received in them applied to other, different agents, not Crowley, who was very busy and clever and above allspecial.-----Something for whiteleyfoster's fic contest, based onthis piece of art.The violence is notthatgraphic, but better to warn than not.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 79
Collections: My Lot Don't Send Rude Notes





	Nothing Personal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhiteleyFoster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteleyFoster/gifts).



_London, 2019_

It should have been the best morning of Crowley’s life. It was, after all, the first morning he would not have to wake up alone in that vast gray bed, and it should have been his; it should have been _theirs_. He should have drifted awake slow and soft and rolled over to face Aziraphale and then—

But the first thing he felt that morning was a sharp cold shock. He jolted and bucked like a landed fish, and before he was truly awake, he had gathered the sheets to his chest and turned and hissed:

“What are you _doing_?”

“I—I’m so sorry, I—”

“Oh, Satan,” said Crowley, shaking his head. “Right, no, it’s all right, it’s all right, I just …”

Aziraphale stared, eyes wide with horror; his hand was still frozen half-open. He had only done what anyone might have done, if they were lying in bed and seeking to wake someone they loved: he had touched Crowley’s back. Specifically, he had traced the brand on Crowley’s right shoulder blade, gently and carefully, with the tip of his finger, asking nothing, meaning no harm.

“I’m sorry,” said Crowley. “You, uh. You weren’t to know. Not like _I_ ever said.”

Aziraphale’s manner changed in an instant. He sat up straight and brisk. No mortal being in flannel pajamas is a picture of authority, but Aziraphale was no mortal being, and he managed it.[1] He gestured sharply.

“Come here,” he said. “Let me see. —I could _do_ something. Come here!”

Crowley stood there for a moment, then slid back onto the bed with an air of _well, I’m doing it, but not because you told me to_.

“Now,” said Aziraphale, running his fingers impersonally against the brands on Crowley’s shoulder blades. “How many of these are there? Two here. How many more?”

“You didn’t notice the other one?”

Crowley was glad his back was turned. He could not quite keep a straight face when he asked that.

“Well,” said Aziraphale—somehow, Crowley could _hear_ him blushing—“yes, but—I wasn’t counting, exactly. And it _was_ dark. Did they not hurt when I—when I held you? If I’d known I wouldn’t—”

“They don’t _hurt_.” Crowley’s bone-white shoulder twitched in a shrug. “They haven’t hurt since—well. Since.”

“Since what? —Crowley? When did these … ?”

Aziraphale’s voice was gentle and soft and very firmly held in check.

“Were these done _to_ you?”

Down in the street, dogs barked; a motorcycle roared. Crowley did not answer. He remained where he was, hunched over the ball of sheets at his chest.

“You needn’t say.” Aziraphale set his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “You needn’t tell me anything if—”

Without turning around, Crowley seized Aziraphale’s hand and held it tightly.

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Just.”

He was shivering with the effort of unclenching his jaws. At last, he managed:

“Coffee first. All right?”

_France, 1794_

“You think I like this?”

In a deep stone hearth, an iron brand rolled and rustled in a bed of coals. Hastur had a voice like the scrape of a shovel in a grave, and it was about as expressive.

“You think this is my idea of a good time?” he went on.

“No, of course not,” said Crowley, trying not to squirm against the ropes, “so what we could do is, and hear me out, we could _postpone_ this until the Dark Council has reviewed—”

Hastur swung the brand around in a wide half-circle and pointed it directly at Crowley’s eyes.

“You want one on your pretty face? That what you want? Keep talking, see what you get.”

Crowley was about to argue _you can’t do that, I’m a field agent_ , but decided, on the whole, to stay quiet.

This was not about the angel. They hadn’t found _that_ out. If they had, that would have been the end of Crowley, very probably the end of Aziraphale, and, although Crowley did not know it then, the eventual end of the world. What _this_ was about was memoranda. Specifically, it was about Crowley’s tendency to assume that the rules and announcements he received in them applied to other, different agents, not Crowley, who was very busy and clever and above all _special_.

“It’s your fault,” said Hastur. “It i’n’t mine. Thousand things I could be doing, instead of this.”

One of the memos that Crowley had ignored was about loyalty. There’d been an announcement about a new loyalty ritual which was about the time that Crowley stopped reading. There were always new rituals; in fact, most of them could have been called “meetings” instead, although that term had not come to bear the horror it would in later years.

Crowley could generally get out of them by pointing out that he was embedded and couldn’t be spared from his job of being passably human. But he’d coasted. He’d skipped one, then another, and assumed he wasn’t missed. At this one, it seemed, he had been. Lord Beelzebub had asked after Crowley, and he hadn’t been there.

After that, Hastur, despite what he’d said about the thousand things to do, had personally volunteered to bring the salient feature of the new ritual to Crowley—the mark called the Leviathan Cross. And so he had, with all the equipment: the ropes, the coals, and his own branding iron.

Hastur had returned the brand to the coals. Now he touched his damp, glabrous finger to the midpoint of the brand. It hissed.

“About right now,” he said.

“Really,” said Crowley, quite conversationally, “when you think about it, which I know you do, what’s the point?”

Hastur turned his empty eyes to Crowley.

“Not as if no one knows where I’ve been,” he went on. “In the middle of a bloody revolution. World turned upside down. Bringing low them that were high, raising up them that were low, chopping off a lot of heads. Or rather, getting them to chop off a lot of heads. Looking after your lad the Marquis, and that was no—”

Hastur struck the side of the hearth with the brand, so that it rang out.

“You let him go to prison!”

“He’s been in and out of it ten times! What do _you_ care if—”

“That’s where we lose ‘em, you idiot!” Spit was flying from his mouth. “Prisons ‘ve got priests crawling through ‘em. If some bastard converts him, after all the blessed years I’ve spent turning him, _making_ him into what he is, it’ll be down to you. And it won’t be the last time you see me on the other end of one of these.”

So that was what this was about. Well. He wasn’t wrong. The Marquis de Sade was Hastur’s golden boy, and Crowley _had_ been told to keep an eye out for him. Then the new regime had hauled him off to prison—again—and Crowley had quite cheerfully failed to lift a finger to stop it. Liking whips and chains was all very well, but the Marquis liked children, too.

“Just now, though,” said Hastur, “nothing personal.”

With that, he thrust the brand into Crowley’s open coat and onto his chest. There was a soft hiss. Crowley was vaguely aware of the smell of burning hair, but he was busy holding his jaws and his throat very, very still.

Hastur drew closer and stepped around back of Crowley’s chair. He leaned close to Crowley’s ear.

“You know I know what it sounds like,” he said, “when someone’s tryin’ not to scream. When someone’s being brave at me."

He pushed the brand into Crowley’s shoulder blade. It seared through his coat, his shirt, and his skin.

“So don’t bother.”

Hastur pulled the brand away, then repeated the procedure. Crowley stayed very straight, jaw cracked open, making the noise of not screaming. Finally, Hastur reached into the holes the brands had made in the fabric of Crowley’s coat and smeared the natural slime of his thumb across the fresh marks, one and then another; and these, too, hissed.

“There,” he said. “All done. Now that weren’t so bad, eh?”

_London, 2019_

If Crowley had been a man, he would have been the sort of man who owned an expensive espresso machine, and so he did. Like every other appliance that Crowley owned, it worked not because he maintained it or took care of it but because he expected it to. Crowley stared at the flat white it had produced in its perfect Lavazza cup. He had told his story after taking a single sip, and did not touch it again.

“He saw himself out after he was done,” Crowley went on. “Thought it was funny to leave me tied up in the kitchen for the cook to find in the morning. ‘Course I could _change_ , you know, get right out of the ropes. And I did. But. You know. Wasn’t really the ropes that were holding me in the first place, when he was there. It was … everything.”

“Oh, Crowley.”

The two of them were fully dressed now, and Aziraphale had listened to Crowley from the far end of the sofa, as if he were a therapist. When Crowley remained silent, Aziraphale said:

“I believe—I’m not sure—but I believe I can take them from you.”

Crowley scowled at the coffee.

“Think I haven’t tried? They’re not bad tattoos. They’re Satan’s brands. It’s not that bloody easy.”

“I never said it would be,” said Aziraphale, his voice gentle. “I’ll have to research, to see how to assemble a rite. I certainly have the volumes to start with, but I may have to ask you to search more, well, more directly for certain texts. —If you want to, of course. And if you wouldn’t …”

Crowley met his eyes.

“That’s all right, too,” Aziraphale said. “They are yours. And you’re free.”

Aziraphale was gazing at him with the full force of his own sincerity, which might have reduced a human to tears. He offered his hand, very cautiously, setting it on the couch between them. With a small, heartbroken smile, Crowley took it.

“I’d like that,” he said. “I would.”

[1] In the following years, Crowley would learn that no matter how they had gone to bed together, he would always roll over in the morning to find Aziraphale in full pajamas. This, Aziraphale said, was because of Standards.

**Author's Note:**

> This slightly reads as a sequel to this fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22005292  
> But what it mainly reads as is a distraction in these days of fear.


End file.
